David Nixon OBE

Charity number 259140

• Marius Petipa
• La Bayadère [Mixed Programme]
• Don Quixote [Grand Pas de Deux]

Marius Petipa
Dancer & Choreographer

Marius Petipa was born in 1818 in Marseille, France. He received his early training, starting at the age of seven, with his brother from their father.

The family moved to Brussels where Petipa attended the Grand College and also studied music at the conservatoire. He disliked dancing as a youngster but made such progress that he appeared in his father's La Dansomanie in 1831. In 1838 Petipa became a principal dancer at the theatre in Nantes, France where he also staged opera dances for the theatre.

Petipa returned to Paris in 1840 where he danced at the Comédie Française then at the Paris Opera where he studied with August Vertris. In 1842 he went to Bordeaux for a year then to Madrid for four years. It was in Madrid that Petipa learned about Spanish dance which would come through in the Spanish dances he choreographed for ballets in Russia.

In 1847 Petipa was engaged to dance at the Imperial Theatre, (also known as the Mariinsky Theatre), in St. Petersburg, Russia. His first appearance at the Mariinsky was in Paquita. His first choreography in Russia was in 1949 for Flotow's opera Alessandro Stradella. However, he did not choreograph a ballet for several more years.

Petipa choreographed his first original ballet in Russia, Un mariage sous régence in 1858. Four years later he created La fille du pharon, his first outstanding success and was made Choreographer-in-Chief of the Imperial Theatre. Over the next several years Petipa choreographed several works which remain key parts of the ballet repertoire to this day. In 1869 he created Don Quixote and La Bayadère followed in 1877, both to music by Minkus.

In 1881 Ivan Vsevolojsky was appointed Director of the Imperial Theatres and his patronage led to the creation of the three great Petipa/Tchaikovsky masterpieces: The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, and Swan Lake. Although not immediately successful, these three ballets are considered by many to be the greatest ballets of all time and remain hugely popular.

Marius Petipa retired in 1903 and was barred from the Imperial Theatres that had been his home for fifty-six years. His memoirs which were published in 1906 and he died in the Ukraine in 1910 at age of ninety-two.

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